The Shinigami on Downing Street

by Abbey Nutter

On a particularly gloomy Friday afternoon near the end of April, my girlfriend conceived the incredibly stupid notion that it would be a brilliant idea for the two of us to spend our evening at the Downing Asylum. Normally, the promise of cigarettes, stolen booze and night alone with a scantily clad Lea would have me hooked on the idea instantly.

But it was only the way that Lea’s bespeckled green eyes kept looking at me as I mulled the idea over in Mr. Hazen’s second-period history class that brought down my unscalable walls of willpower and made me agree to spending my Friday night in the one building in town that gave me what people in those old black and white horror flicks refer to as “the willies”.

Lame as it may seem, the reality was that my steely resolve had been broken by a single batting of Lea’s long lashes. But there is honestly so little that scares me that my friends have taken to calling me the unfazeable Elric Johnson.

Okay-no one actually calls me that, but the point still remains that I would like my non-existent reputation to still be in tact by the type the sun rises over the peeling shingles of the asylum’s caving roof.

In essence, I’m completely and totally screwed.

~*~ 

 At lunch, I barely touch my food, picking apart my taco as though it were a dead frog in desperate need of dissecting, which is apparently the exact sort of disconcerting behavior that your best friend tends to pick up on.

“Elric. I know that you’re religious about tacos being served on Tuesdays, but I don’t think that giving that thing a proper autopsy is going to change the day of the week.” I grumble out a half-assed apology and Baz- who’s known me longer than anyone else at this school- gives me a look that lets me know that I’d better start talking or I’d be facing whatever consequences his sick mind could manage to conjure up.

I sigh, quickly deciding that it would be best to fess up before Baz’s mind has time to work. “Lea wants me to take her to the asylum tonight.”

The look on Sebastian’s face is enough to tell me that I’m not crazy for wanting to maintain the three-block radius I’ve kept between me and that place since I was six.

“You’re kidding.” He gapes.

“Nope” I confirm my Californian girlfriend’s latest bad idea through a mouthful of lettuce and ground beef, hoping that the amount of grease dripping down my chin will hide the fact that I’m just as scared shitless of that place as every other person in this town.

“God, I wish that place was still running. I’d throw her crazy ass in there for just suggesting that you two pay it a visit.”

“Oh come on, Baz. You can’t actually believe everything people say about that place.”

“You don’t? Elric, no one can make that shit up.”

“Besides people who want to give hormone crazed teens a reason to think twice about trespassing on foreclosed government property.”

“When you die, do you want roses or lilies on your coffin?" Baz changes the subject quickly, knowing that he can’t win an argument when competing against my logic.

I scrunch up my nose. “Neither. Give me some fucking daffodils so I can keep some of my dignity when you go around telling everyone how I was stupid enough to get myself torn apart by the thing in the asylum.”

Baz leaned back in his chair, kicking his feet onto the garish red cafeteria table as he studied me. A smug smile appeared on his face. “Ah. So you are scared.”

“I’m not-”

“Scared of anything,” Baz sighed in an attempt to be dramatic. “I know. Trust me, I know. But if you ask me-”

“Which I didn’t, by the way. Just so we’re clear,” I interrupt, earning myself a glare before he continues.

“If you ask me, spending the night in that place is a perfectly logical thing to be afraid of.”

“If I were scared- which I’m not- I would have vetoed Lea’s idea.”

“Whatever, man. It’s your funeral.”

“There won’t be any funeral unless you keep talking.”

I laugh as Baz raises his hands in surrender, shoving my untouched Chem textbook into my backpack.

The rest of the day passed without incident, the clocks seeming to plot against me as the minutes flew by. Before I knew it, the final bell had rung, and I was holding open the door to my gaudy rust-bucket of a car so that Lea could get in.

I might be scared shitless, but that doesn’t give me an excuse to not be a gentleman. My mother raised me right, you know. Despite my poor judgement in the past eight hours, this was a fact that was undeniably true. My mother did try.

Driving towards the Downing Asylum (a route I knew well because of my intentional avoidance of that place), I resisted the urge to yell for Lea to stop babbling as she went on about nothing in particular, filling me in on the Hilton High gossip that I had apparently missed while I was actually attempting to be a good student. I, of course, didn’t care about a word she was saying, nor did I listen as the she filled the drive with the dull roar of her monotonic voice.

As I turn onto Downing Street, I can see the decaying corpses of the old oak trees that dotted the asylum’s property.

No one knew exactly what had caused them to die, but fourteen years ago their leaf filled branches had shed the way an old dog does in summer. They had been old and graying memories of their former selves ever since.

Of course, my poetic attention to the trees surrounding us draws my false attention away from my girlfriend, alerting her to my resounding disinterest on the subject of who fucked who at what party when.

“Elric are you even listening to me?”

“Huh? Yeah, of course I am. I was just looking for a parking spot.” Lea looked more than mildly annoyed as I pulled into an overgrown spot on the gravel lot, my car strategically concealed by the hulking mass of the asylum’s mess of a green house.

“The whole thing is a parking space, Johnson.”

“Well I’d rather not have a patrol car spotting us and taking us to juvie for your latest bad idea.”

Lea laughed, grabbing the bag of food that she’d swiped from her pantry during our lunch period. “Oh please. I’ve gotten caught for a lot worse than this and gotten a lot less than juvie in return.”

“What did you-” I watch Lea quickly go to answer and change my mind just as fast. “You know what, I don’t want to know.”

I sigh, taking the hairpin that Lea offers me as we walk towards the door.

I’m not proud of this, but I’ve accumulated experience in the area of expertise that requires knowing how to pick a lock in under a minute.

Lea played lookout- or her sad attempt of one. She stood with a hand on her hip, glancing around as she scrolled on her phone.

I roll my eyes. I didn’t know why I had expected her to be any help.

The door swings open, revealing the dim interior of the asylum’s old activities room and Lea looks up from her screen. “Forty-five seconds. You’re getting rusty.”

“Not as rusty as this lock, Sweetheart,” I smirked. “Good things take time.”

I watched the dust filled windows as she took the bag of junk food and blankets to search out a good spot to spend our night in. Stepping over the threshold of the doorway felt like stepping onto sacred ground, as though something ancient lived here.

As though something was lying in wait, I thought.

Lea had us set up on the third floor, in a corner of peeling paint and graffiti stained walls. The blankets were sprawled out, setting up whatever mood my girlfriend though she could wave a magic wand to be there in a place like this.

It worked. I forgot about the uneasy feeling in my stomach and the dark shadow that I could have sworn I saw drifting past the windows.

It worked so well that I didn’t hear the name whispering through the darkness until after midnight, long after Lea had laid her head on a bunched up sweatshirt (mine) and curled up on the threadbare blanket that we’d brought along (also mine).

Taekyli.

The name was like venom on a nonexistent wind, seeping into my skin and leaving me cold and alert.

My eyes swept the abandoned hall as the name came again, this time more urgent, more like a desperate warning than an impending threat.

Taekyli.

The breath I was about to take caught in my throat as the fleeting kisses of a nighttime breeze brushed my cheek.

I settled, looking to the sleeping girl by my side before glancing at the fluttering tendrils of plastic that hissed through the broken glass of the window pane.

The wind. I assured myself halfheartedly. It was only the wind, nothing more.

I still didn’t try my luck with closing my eyes. I had watched the horror movies where the guy who falls asleep is the first one dead.

Perhaps this was selfish of me, but if this turned into a horror movie, I didn’t want to be that guy who gets killed off within the first five minutes of a monster movie because he was too busy sleeping to see the thing coming for him.

I laid my head back against the rough surface of the wall and took a long sip from the tumbler of stale coffee that I had leftover from this morning.

This was going to be a long night.

***

My phone died at 1:23 A.M.

Its glaring dark screen stared up at me like a taunting school boy, leaving me alone in the black void surrounding our little corner with no flashlight and no way of knowing what lurked in the far reaches of the hallway.

I spent the last hour in a perpetual state of alertness. Every scuffle of a rat darting from one hiding place to another sent my mind reeling. Every shift of Lea’s slim shoulders against the rough ground made me squint against the faded orange of a street light.

A cold wind came over me, knocking the breath out of my lungs. The name came again, low and growling.

Taekyli

The world turned red.

Glowing red eyes.

Parted ruby lips.

Streaming crimson blood.

The blood wasn’t mine-

It wasn’t mine.

In a flash of movement, I whirled to where Lea had been sleeping only moments before.

Her eyes were open now, widening spheres of dimming white and grey, filled with fear and pain and all of the emotions that I had never known Lea to never show-or have. A fist protruded from her chest, charred bone stained with red. It held her off the ground where she hung limply, her fuzz covered toes barely brushing the floor.

Her lips shine red in the orange light, struggling to form whatever last words were running through her head. “E...Elric?”

I swallowed, trying to keep my eyes locked on hers instead of letting them wander up or down. Up towards the thing that drew her closer, eliciting a pained cry from her lips. Down towards her blood soaked shirt-the one I had bought her for Christmas.

“Yeah?”

“I...I want to go home.” Lea’s voice was weak. Childlike.

“I’ll...We’ll…” I didn’t know how to start.

Her eyes closed before I could.

A cold laugh escaped the charred lips of the thing looming behind her. My throat went dry as her body dropped to the ground with a dull thud.

The laughter escaped into a hissing, low voice that I’d never get out of my head.


“Humans.” The thing chuckled, licking Lea’s blood off its charred fingers. “So predictably valiant until you look death in the eye. Then you become a shivering pile of skin and bone.”

I glanced down at my hands, balling them into fists to stop their shaking. “If you’re not human, what are you then?” The red glow of the creature's eyes bore into mine, leaving my insides churning.

“Why, I’m a shinigami, of course." I took a careful step backward as it straightened to its full height, stretching the hands that killed Leas so that the small amount of blood left on the tips of the thing’s- the shinigami, apparently- fingers flicked onto the cracked grey tiling of the floor.

My back pressed against the cool metal of a door as the dark mass of the shinigami drew closer. “Going so soon? I thought we could have a bit of fun before I ate my fill.”


It didn’t advance, instead stooping down to where Lea’s body had crumpled to the ground. I only hoped that the death god would be satisfied with her.

Taekyli licked its charred, cracked lips, a talon sliding from its mangled bone fingers and pressing against the bloodstained fabric. The shinigami slid its claw along the center of Lea’s stomach, darkening blood blossoming in its wake.

Its other hand waved to pin me back against the splintering wood of the door.

The force of my back slamming against its surface rattled its rusted hinges, and I squeezed my eyes shut as the sickening sound of flesh and bone being ripped apart filled the deep parts of my stomach with a mixture of nausea and dread.

Invisible fingers tugged at my eyelids, pulling them open so that I had to watch what I knew would soon happen to me.

Lea’s chest and rib cage had been torn open, leaving a gaping hole that looked disturbingly like the ones that I’d cut into the diaphragm of a frog during fourth-period Biology. Her head lolled to the side like those rag-doll props they use for corpses on TV.

Except when Lea was splayed open like a piece of expensive meat, it wasn’t stuffing that came out. It was blood and discarded organs that the shinigami tossed out like a child in search for a toy.

It was practically drooling as it drew a sphere of glowing red and bronze from my girlfriend’s chest.

Seeming to sense whatever morbid curiosity had broken my horror stricken state in order for me to wonder what the hell this unidentified thing is, Taekyli looked to me, tilting his leather like head and giving me what I suppose was intended to be an amused grin-which I suppose it still was, even though I was more focused on the accompanying rows of shining pointed teeth.

The shinigami took it upon himself to break the silence that I had been content with. “I take it that you have never seen a human soul then.”

I hesitated. Shook my head. “I can’t say that I have.” Better to keep it talking while I still had a chance to formulate a plan for escape.

“The soul, Elric Johnson, is all any self respecting shinigami seeks.” I ignored the fact that it knew my name and continued with my previous chain of thought. The window?


No, we were too high. I’d just kill myself on the way down. “It rests behind the heart, just where you humans think that there is nothing.” The hallway? That would just lead me to another dead end.

I didn’t even pretend to listen as I inched my fingers to wrap around the knob of the door I was restrained against.

The shinigami’s yellow yolked eyes narrowed into slits as it dropped Lea’s soul into its gaping maw.

It swallowed, and I ran, barreling through the door and into the dark corridor beyond.

It gave chase to me in a flash of movement, banging against the narrowing walls.

The grayed hands of long dead corpses reached out from behind the doors aligning the hall, grabbing for me as I passed and snatching at the fabric of my flannel shirt. The voices of the deceased patients they belonged to followed me as I stumbled down the first flight of stairs.

Taekyli, they whispered.

Yes. Was the only answer my panicked eyes could give them.

The hands seemed to understand, drawing back into their rooms in my peripherals as I took the next set two steps at a time.

I felt as though I was flying by the time my feet hit the first floor and I tumbled to the ground, my ankles bending and snapping beneath me as the tiny beam of light streaming through the parking lot door disappearing with a quick snapping of wood on plaster. 

  

Taekyli was looming above me when I opened my eyes, his face inches from my own.

“Shall we begin?”